hey panther, seems like you've job hopped quite a bit in your first 5 seasons. It takes some time to learn this game, but it can be fun once you learn some of the nuances. Send me a site mail if you have questions.
If you haven't read these threads, they are very helpful for new coaches.
Aejones, how to win at D2/D3: http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=453763
A recruiting guide: http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=437944
Coach BillyG's intreview: http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=457031

I've decided to do a semi revival on this thread as I've taken over Marian. I won't be going as in depth, but I'll put in some player thoughts during recruiting, non-con, conference play, and any post season.

I took this team over last season, season #65. I was a C-, and had terrible class breakdown. I cut several players, so I was lower on recruiting money to start as well. I managed to recruit 6 guys to fill out my first class. Most of them are decent enough to compete, but not much better. C- and down on money is not a good way to start.

SEASON #65

C: Henry Whetzel "The Pretzel". He's got competitive ATH, great REB, good D, great SB, great STAM. He'll never be a scorer, so I'm not too scared off by his bad FT and non existent BH/P. I need a rebounder who can defend, and this guy is it.

PF: Donald Lucia. He's a Pretzel lite version. Better ATH, with worse everything else except LP. His STAM is going to be a problem, and his WE is 35, but again, low money and low prestige makes a beggar of me. He's got the ATH and DEF I need and can REB. Welcome to Marian College, sir!

SF:Christopher Kindred. Another low WE wonder, but he's projecting to 50/70 ATH/SPD with 50 D and 80 STAM. He's High FT, and can BH/P and is High High LP. He caps out very low, maybe only 550, so the low WE doesn't bother me so much since he'll be starting a lot.

SF: Richard "Bill" Clinton. His scouting report said he was a hit with the ladies, and mentioned nothing of his musical ability and band, the P-Funk, so "George" was out. At least he's high WE, so I can leave him as a backup with no issues so my bad WE recruits can start. He caps out abysmally low, but his ATH, projects to 50 REB, good D, PER, and can P/BH a little, with decent FT and great STAM. He's a guy who won't hurt me coming off the bench at two positions.

PG/SG: Mike Reidy. Not the fastest guy, and scouting says he's low high D. Ugg. He projects to 60/70 BH/P though, and he's high high PER with decent FT and great STAM. He actually projects out pretty high, like 600, I actually consider him a steal with my money and prestige. The low D sucks, but I'm running press, so I can hide him a litte. His BH/PASS/STAM/FT will be a benefit.

PG/SG: Lewis Mosely. Same SPD/ATH as Reidy. Much better D, but worse BH/P/PER but good FT and great STAM again. He even REB a little, might get to 30 depending on if I have minutes I can get into it. No complaints considering my low money/prestige situation.

I keep 3 guys on the team. Howard, Morgan, and Beckley. All are horrible D, but the guards are fast, with good STAM and FT both. Morgan will be a sniper off the bench with his ridiculous PER. Howard will be a nice bit of punch off the bench with his LP and REB.

I slog through a 9-19 season after switching my offense and starting my FR. 9 wins is more wins than the last two seasons combined, and considering all the FR I'm starting, I'm not complaining. I could have gone 0-fer and not been shocked.

SEASON #66

Low money, low prestige again, I recruit Harper, Arcuri and Francisco. Not much to say. Both bigs will hit 70 REB. All 3 have great STAM and are at competive at some level on ATH/SPD but are a little low on D. Not much to say about team improvements. Most of my guys were low WE anyway.

I scheduled my non-con last year to basically consist of teams I'd figure would win half their games and be in the 150-200 RPI range. I figure with 3 SR and no JR, all 3 SR having bad D, my entire team being low IQ on Offense, I shouldn't schedule too hard and ruin any chance at a small prestige bump when I recruit 3 guys this next season. Getting to even a C would be helpful. I only have one coached team on my schedule. I tend to accept any offer made as long as I think the team won't be horrible next season. I figure everyone else figured the same, thats why no one offered me any games.

My scheduling plan pretty much works. I'm favored in every game but one, and most opposing teams are hovering around are .500 at the end of the non-con. Half are in the 200 RPI range. I can't really complain. I go 10-0 which is important. Morgan is the sniper off the bench I figured he would be. This team really doesn't have any scorers outside of him. But my ATH/D/REB plan works as even with poor IQ, i'm holding teams below .440 shooting and outrebounding my opponents. I'm also hacking my opponents like crazy, leaving them no arms to eat with. Its to be expected with my average SPD/ATH and IQ. So far, its playing out exactly as I expected, although I would have figured I would have lost a non-con game or two, even considering the bad SIMS I played.

(Conference time) The rubber begings to meet the road.

W Rockford 74-84

This SIM team is basically the same as mine. Morgan has 18 off the bench.

L Hope 61-65

This one hurt. The SIM has me as a favorite, lose by 4 on the road. Both starting G foul out in 12 and 15 min. An all around stinker of a game.

L Finlandia 79-111

#7 team in the country. No shock on the blowout here. 6 guys foul out, Francisco fouled out in 8 minutes.

W Alma 80-103

#17 loses on the road. Now, Alma is 50 points higher rated than Marian. However, this is one bad D team. Morgan scores 26 off the bench. There were a lot of places to exploit. I'm not surprised by the win, despite my lower rated, and bad IQ team. I figured I was 40-60 in this game. Perhaps the margin of victory is surprising, but Alma had 3 guys foul out, and 2 more in foul trouble. Not a lot of minutes on those guys either. Again, not shocked, but pleasantly surprised.

W Eureka 60-92

Eureka is having a bad season. Held them to .400 shooting. Nothing of note in this game.

L Olivet 72-56

#15 team in the country, Simmy has them as +1. They are rated 40 points higher than Marian. I figured I was 20% in this game. He shot eat against me, and I got crushed in the first half. I didn't really game plan this one, perhaps I could have exploited his low D guys better, but the fact remains all my guys are low IQ and I only have two decent scorers, so "exploiting" guys is all going to be relative anyway.

L Calvin 87-75

Supposedly I'm a -4 for this game. Calvin is about 25 points higher rated. He's got decent REB, good D, but no real scorers. I figured I was 40% for this game. Calvin's superiort D shines, and my lack of IQ and scorers shines as well. I shoot .361 and my two starting G foul out again. I also get out rebounded. I'm hoping games like this one and the Hope game are ones I win next season when IQ's are up. But then, I'll be missing Morgan off the bench, and my second best threat, Howard will also be gone. I better recruit some scoring at some point.

W Rockford 85-64

I expected to beat the SIM again, and did. I figured I was 65%-35% for this game. A loss would have been horrible, but not over all surprising. Not much to note about this game.

W Adrian 62-69

Pretty excited about this one. Adrian is 10-9, but they have superior rebounding, competive ATH/SPD/D and more scoring options than my squad. Their SOS is 15. This is a two point game with a minute left, and I manage the win. Adrian has one walk-on, and I can't help but think STAM played a bit of a factor in this game at a couple points. I shot a lot better than I should have, and my D shouldn't have held against his superior LP guys, but we hold to .440 shooting somehow. This is one of those games I'd be upset at losing if I were Adrian. It does make the Hope / Calvin games hurt a little less.

W MBB 105-102(OT)

Marian is now 11-102 all time against Maranatha Bible Baptist. Yay. I'm 50 points lower rated, and yet somehow I'm only +1. MBB has 6-7 legit scoring threats. They are way better at ATH/SPD/D than I am. But they do have two weaknesses. Two low D guys, and they only have one decent rebounder. I decide I'm going right at Barnard. I know he's a beast, and my only shot is to get him into foul trouble with his low D rating. It works, he fouls out in 15 min. He still wrecked me for 21 points on 9-13 shooting, but in this OT win, I'm glad he's not on the court. No complaints here. Schofield, the opposing C, also fouls out in 11 minutes. Since both teams are running uptempo, STAM becomes at issue, because 4 MBB players fouled out, and MBB is more top heavy on its STAM than Marian. I also benefit as part of the STAM problem is MBB shoots 24-43 from FT. In a 3 point OT loss, you'd like to have some of those misses. All in all, my gameplan worked to perfection. I still had no business winning, but its nice to see a worse team can gameplan a win sometimes.

Over halfway through the season, Marian is sitting at a ridiculous 16-4 53 RPI, 80 SOS, 43 Projection Report. With 6 games to go, 2-4 or 3-3 is likely. That's 18-8 or 19-7 going into the conference tournament. That's way better than I could reasonably expect, and an PI bid looks like a lock. That's way better than I figured in a world like Wooden in my second season with no money, no prestige, and bad class breakdown. If I can pull some upsets, then an NT bid isn't out of the question. Probably a 12-15 area.

I'll update again at the end of the conference season. I hope people enjoy this.

The end of last season ended up being quite the stinker. After it looked like I may pull off a miracle NT bid, I promptly lost 5 games in a row, including the conference tournament, then lost in the first round of the PI. Not the way we wanted to go. I'm not overly upset, since we were more competitive than I thought anyway. I chose not to update each game, as they weren't very compelling. No game strategy panned out, and was overall rather boring.

After two seasons, it looks like this:

S65 9-19 254 RPI C-
S66 18-10 87 RPI C+ PI (First Round)

For recruiting this season (S67), I noticed a slight uptick in the quality of recruits I could get to consider me. Not much, but better. There were quite a few guys that weren't highly rated but good potential that wouldn't give me the time of day. I'm hoping that another two seasons, I'll be able to recruit those guys.

I landed 3 prize recruits (note sarcasm here):

James "Koi" Pond (Center) 40 25 57 37 43 26 10 15 12 41 60 56 C- 422

He plays adequate defense, but I needed a rebounder. Arcuri is already maxed out at 64 reb, and I needed another guy. He will hit 80 reb with 80 stam. He's High/high LP, so hopefully he'll at least hit 50 so he can at the minimum tip the ball back in. The additional perimeter and bh/pass is just gravy.

He's not particularly fast, probably max out around 75-77. He's also lower ATH than I like, but I really really wanted a pure PG. He'll be a BH wizard, with good passing. He's High/High PER, so hopefully he'll turn into a shooter at some point. His low WE isn't good, but he'll be starting this season so hopefully that will help. His low D is bad too, but I really wanted a guy who could be a PG, and he shootsthe FT too. His STAM will be 80, which is important. Beggars couldn't be choosers. My low prestige and only 3 scholarships kinda hamstrung me. I'm afraid his average speed and D will hurt me, but his good bh/pass/per/stam/ft will hopefully counter some of that.

Jeffery Moore (PG) 31 54 12 258 819 39 59 49 80 41 B 425

Everyhing I said about Iverson, repeat it here. Not much more to say. They'll end up being the same player probably, except one has better bh, and the other better pass. And Moore's D will be better. Hopefully two seasons from now, I'll be a B prestige and can get the next tier of players that I currently can't get now.

The rest of the team:

Decent improvements, and my big JR class still has 30-100 points of improvements in them. So they should max out some time early in the season next year hopefully. With no SR, my team is 496 rated. Team ATH/SPD/D is 44/43/43. Doing quick math, ATH will only go up 3-4 points by the end of next season.SPD will only go up 6 points. D will go up 9 points, projecting a final ATH/SPD/D to be 48/49/52 at the end of next season. Those numbers aren't bad if you have other stats to go with them. Unfortunately, I don't. My other stats are so abysmally low, we're going to have trouble scoring points. We won't BH/PASS well. We won't have any scorers in the LP or PER. My best shot is the end of next season to have two 70 PER and two 70 LP guys. That's at the END of next season.

I'm putting 23 minutes into O and D, trying to bridge the gap between my low ratings and the higher rated teams by having higher IQ. Unfortunately, by the end of next season, I'll be graduating 6 guys and have to do it all over again. My hope is a B prestige by then so I can recruit better guys with my big class and more recruiting money.

So we're 15 games in and Marian ended the non-con at 8-2. I played a "who's WHO?" list of opponents. As I noted in previous posts, I planned that all my teams be in the 150-200 range for RPI. I failed miserably, with 3 300+ RPI schools and one 231 RPI school. Not much to say about the SIM games.

I'm favored by one at home. At this point I'm undefeated without having really played anyone except a stout Lewis and Clark team. Rochester's Triangle/Press versus Marian's FB/Press. Rochester for some reason is +1 to open the game. My 1-3 spots are my leading scorers, but they are much more in the paint, so I'm not sure this was a right call. I'm up by 9 at the half. Then the wheels totally come off the wagon in the second half. Rochester goes -1 and gets outscored 80-29 in the second half. My bench scores 75 points, outscoring Rochester's whole team by 11. Marian has 29 FB points allowing for 51% shooting. 5 players off the bench score double digits, but the line of the night goes the Whetzel "the Pretzel" for 9 pts, 16 reb (6 offensive) and 7 blocks. 2 steals.

Game 7: Rutgers at Camden at Marian 81-94 L.

I'm favored by 1 at home again. Rutgers is 25 points higher rated than I am. I'm feeling good after my last game, but Rutgers has the same ath/spd/d/reb as I do. He's also got at least 3-4 legit scoring threats. He's got 1 FR, 1 SO, and the rest are upper class men. I'm ripe to get taken down here, and I do. I give up a blistering 53%, got outrebounded, and only had 9 steals. 14 assists, 26 turnovers. What a stinker of a game.

Game 9: #11 Carleton at Marian 77-88 L.

Apparently this was a "Shootout Tournament" game, which I had no idea was going on. I wondered why my schedule was so cream puffy and suddenly I have a ranked team in the middle of it. I'm rather ashamed to say I gave up on this game before it started and didn't game plan. Carleton has better Ath/sp/D across the board, along with 3-4 legit scoring threats. Sound familiar to the Rutgers game? This team has 2 FR and 10 upperclassmen too. Their real weakness is they are really really bad at rebounding. They only have one guy really. Defensively, they have a couple of low guys but I have zero offensive weapons on my team, so I can't really exploit anything. SG James "Allen" Iverson fouls out in 7 min. PG Reidy fouls out in 20 min. My two backup G foul out in 20 and 16 minutes. My third string backup G fouled out in 12 minutes. Yes, every G on my team fouled out. I fouled a whopping 41 times, and Carleton went to the line 62 times. The only bright spot is that I did out rebound them by 12. Yay. I wish there was a lesson learned here, but there isn't. My team is slower, less athletic, doesn't have offensive weapons, and is younger. All stuff I knew beforehand.

Season thoughts so far:

I beat Hood for my final win of the non-con, which currently is a pretty good RPI win for me. Unfortunately my RPI and SOS was around 120 and 250 respectively. If anyone's following, I did note in previous posts that this team would have problem scoring points, which hasn't really shown to be true. Marian is currently leading the nation in scoring at 95.7 pts per game. Marian is also second in rebounding in the nation at 46.3. We're 3rd in the nation in blocks. I notice the second highest scoring team in the nation is DeSales. They also lead the nation in rebounding, and blocks. I also note they have the same W/L record. But they have a B+ prestige, a 28 RPI and 81 SOS, and a #17 ranking. I say this because Marian has not come close to being ranked and yet the stats are so similar. Obviously we aren't paying the right people, its the only possible reason.

I've also noted that all my player projections are right on track. Also, My assist to turnover ratio is a perfect 1:1. Seriously, its 265 assists/266 TO. I also don't steal nearly as much I would like, only 12 a game, but this team really doesn't have the ratings or IQ to do much better. IQ's are doing well, with all my JR at A-. Hopefully at the end of next season 5 guys will be A+ which will be nice.

The grueling conference season is coming up, where my SOS is sure to get better, while my RPI and record are sure to plummet.

Greetings. I haven't updated in forever, because a) it was a lot of work, b) I don't know if anyone even read this, and c) there wasn't much to report.

The past two seasons, my team has completely fallen apart down the stretch. Both years, I was sitting on about 30 on the projection report. Seasons 66 and 67, I then lost about 2/3rds of my games, and ended up going PI both seasons. Very frustrating. It wasn't until this season the team was any type of interesting. I didnt figure anyone cared about my losing ways. My history so far:

In S68, I beat two ranked teams at home, and lost to #1 Chicago on the road by 11 and went 9-1. In conference, I lost the final game of the season to Maranatha, going 15-1. I ended up losing the conference tournament title game to Calvin. I lost in the S16 to eventual national champion Chicago (again) . The only thing of note is my miraculous 50-50 record against Maranatha. Every season, he's much much better, yet I continually pull off miracle wins for no reason.

I didn't get to enjoy my B- prestige in S67, because my entire team was coming back. No recruiting for me. I finish S68 with 6 SR and a 572 team rating. I had a pedestrian 48/49/51 big three rating. Fortunately, my team stam was really good (81), team FT shooting was really good (B-, 74%), and team passing wasn't bad either (43). I predicted in the middle of S67 the big three to be 48/49/52 so I was dead on there with team development. I had 4 players with A+ ratings in FB and Press. I predicted 5 players to have this rating.

With the 46 SOS, the team shot .495, but a horrible .387 from 3 point land. Not suprising, my prestige was too low to recruit anyone who could walk and chew bubble gum, much less shoot. I averaged 15 offense rebounds a game, which was nice, and outrebounded my opponents by 10 a game. My assist/to is 22/15, and my opponents are 9/22. I don't steal the ball much (12/g), low for a press team, but did block 6.6/g. That was pretty cool! Normally my good teams foul a lot less than my opponents too, but that wasn't the case for this team. We just aren't fast/athletic/D enough for that. But with 6 to recruit, with an A- prestige, hopefully I can change that now. We did win by 25 points a game this season.

How were we successful with average ratings and low prestige recruiting? Basically, a large class with high IQ was key. I also leaned heavily on the guys who could shoot. I monitored carefully who was performing, and compared it to their ratings. If they had the ratings to support their stats, I gave them the ball more. If they didn't have the ratings, I kept their distribution the same. Guys I had no confidence in never got the ball. Normally I like to keep other teams honest by giving lesser guys the ball some, to make it tougher to game plan against me. But that's for my teams with other scoring options. Basically 3-4 guys were getting the ball non stop all season no matter the consequences for this team.

Overall, every guy developed like I thought they would. Looking back at past posts in this thread, I can see I was right on with most of my assumptions.

So is Marian rebuilt? Not yet. We'll have to see what happens with this recruiting class. Its easy to have a bit of success every 3-4 seasons with a big class. Being a quality team year in and year out is the goal. With a good class, and then sustaining it, Marian will be rebuilt. If I were to quit now, I wouldn't be leaving anyone a sustainable program except a decent prestige as a starting point. I say this because the other 6 guys who aren't graduating are really really bad. So bad I want to cut some.

Anyway, I hope some people have found this enjoyable. I'll see you all on the battlefield.

I for one like to follow your thread and enjoy reading your posts. I liked it better though back when you did game by game recaps which you stopped doing for the past couple of seasons. Hopefully you'll start doing that again. I noticed most of your recruits this season were from California and Texas - that was a clever strategy since there is so much competition in our home turf area around Michigan!

Here we are 5 games into Season 69. Marian is sitting at 4-1. Marian can be found here.

Without digging too deeply into each player, with my A- prestige I was able to get much better players. Not the ones I really wanted, but much better.

Henry Latimore

Fr.

PF

63

27

32

58

14

33

12

12

37

60

61

29

C+

438

Joseph Stroble

Fr.

PF

53

26

51

47

41

29

11

28

14

46

70

44

C

460

Philip Fisher

Fr.

SG

44

33

10

59

1

28

60

33

13

65

56

55

C+

457

Jack Smith

Fr.

PG

39

63

1

23

1

10

59

34

47

37

71

69

C+

454

Samuel Barth

Fr.

PG

46

70

14

38

1

14

18

50

46

37

83

34

B-

451

Milton Ray

Fr.

SG

40

42

8

44

1

1

59

51

32

54

81

47

C+

460

I'm pretty excited because this squad's potentials are much better. The starting D rating is much better. All the G will be 70 PER. I missed out on the BH/P to get the stamina and D I wanted. I won't ramble on about these guys like I have in the past seasons. Point is, for my FB/Press team, stam and D, and ath are much improved. The team isn't very fast, which is a problem, but Wooden recruiting is like that, as we all know. Can't get what we really want most of the time. One can see the step up in recruit though. Compare my two bigs for example:

Stephen Arcuri

Sr.

PF

40

21

70

47

55

54

9

10

22

52

76

74

C

530

Joseph Stroble

Fr.

PF

53

26

51

47

41

29

11

28

14

46

70

44

C

460

Stroble, the freshman, is better Ath/Spd/D, probably the same in every other category except for rebounding. And he'll be a better bh/p guy, which is great for FB/p. But I lost in rebounding. I couldn't find any I liked and will really have to look hard next season.

Game 1: at Bowdoin (SimAI) 53-101 W

After 5 games, Bowdoin is 465 rated and 1-4. This isn't a very good team. I'm not sure why I scheduled it except maybe I thought I needed wins with half my team graduated. I didn't really gameplan, I just set my distribution as usual. I hold them to .304 shooting. Stroble pulls in 11 boards in his opening game as starting freshman PF. Freshman Sam Barth, he of the 18 per, 14 lp goes off for 15. Moore gunboats 22 off the bench.

Game 2: Elizabethtown (tuhoopsmf1) 61-68 W

I'm favored by 1 in the game. Elizabethtown is 537 rated currently to my 503. Closer inspection shows their class breakdown as pretty even, so there's not a huge IQ advantage there. I'm aided by the fact they run a combo D. Ath/S/D ratings are comparable. They are a below average team in Stam, and bad FT shooters. Ratings wise that is, on the year they are shooting .769. Go figure. They lead until halfway thru the second half. I personally believe stam became an issue at that point when I tie it up at the 11:16 mark. They are more tired than my squad, some players being in the red for the good 10 minutes left of the game. My guys are fairly fresh. I outscore them the rest of the way. I win by 7 despite shooting .615 from the line. They shoot .800 from the line. Go figure again.

Game 3: Redlands (trentonjoe) 92-70 L

Redlands is 558 rated, 62/44/58 with good team stam at 75. He's got a lot of rebounders. The only weakness is he's not very good in BH/P which press can exploit. However, I give myself 10% in this game. I don't match up in any category. I'm +1 spread this game, but I don't expect it to be that close, and it isn't. They shoot a whopping .620 against me. I'm outrebounded, and have 10assist, 21 TO and 33 personal fouls. Ouch.

Game 4: at Capital (sean_65) 87-58 W

Capital is 501 rated with a 30/44/28 big 3 rating, and 72 team stam, with C FT. I figure I'm about 70% on this game. I'm on the road, which can be bad, but there's so many holes to exploit in this game, it would be a true upset to lose this one. The spread is -4, but much like the Redlands game, I don't think its going to be that close, and it isn't. FR SG Barth has a field day, going off for 25 points. The team shoots .526, and forces Capital into a 8/26 assist/to day. Even after so many seasons, I'm learning about the engine still. Barth has horrid shooting ratings. Remember, neither LP or Per are even 20. He is however, 83 stam and 70 speed and a B FT shooter. He went up against and 61 speed, 17 D guard who's backup is a FR, with 51spd and 17 D. So I guess the fact he's playing slower, less athletic guys with horrible D, even his dismal shooting ratings work, because he's scoring 7ppg from the line, and he's reasonably fast and doesn't tire out.

Game 5: #6 William Paterson (ncw23) 82-84 W

The first real shocker of the season. I'm +13 this game. Frankly, two things won this game for me. Playing at home, and a curious coaching decision by Ncw23. I decide to go +1 despite WP not shooting 3's, mainly because their guards do so much scoring. He's got better REB than I do, but not so much I feared going +1. I feared the 35 points his G's would drop on me more. Team Ath/Spd/D ratings are comparable. Team stam is 73. They are 551 rated to my 503. Here's where it gets interesting. He only plays 9 guys despite having a full roster. I wondered if he's ghost shipping it and still winning games. Yet I check his schedule and see he's changed tempo and +/- every game. Curious.

The result? I'm up at the half by 5. He comes back in the second half. But he's running UPTEMPO. The strength of FB/Press is that you use your depth to beat up on other team's bench. So running uptempo really plays into my hands as, predictably, he starts running into stam issues. One guy fouls out, the other has 4 fouls. I'm up by 2 at the 7 minute mark, and he's got two guys in the orange and they play the rest of the game like that. The result? The last 3 minutes of the box score show the two guards turning the ball over 3 times and Jackson, who was in the yellow, probably moving into the orange at that point, clanking multiple shots and turning the ball over. Two key free throws by FR Stroble (he of the C rating) seal the win. (Hey, I'll take a bit of luck too.) I don't score after the :41 mark, but they don't either, which I fully place on fatigue.

They still shot .525 and out rebounded me. But I did force 22 turnovers, which was nice.

So Marian gets a big win. It also really helped I recruited guys not only with good D ratings, but they were already good (44 and 57 and such). If they were in the 30's while I waited all season for them to improve, I would be losing all these games for sure with all my freshman. I can really use this win, since the rest of my schedule is brutal. What was I thinking. The remaining teams are 20-5, with the "worst" of the bunch being Aejone's St. John's team. Ouch. I may lose the rest of my games in the non conference season.

At this point, Marian is 4-1, shooting .466, .719 from the line, getting outrebounded by one on the season, and 13/15 assist/to ratio. However, I'm only allowing .435 shooting, and 11/22 assist/to ratio. That will change with the next 5 games coming up. FR Sam Barth, of the 18 per rating, is leading the team in scoring at 14.2ppg and 48% shooting. I'll check back in 5 games from now when I'm 4-6.

This is a 539 rated sim with 11 upperclassman. This is a really nice RPI win for us. I'm listed as +1. I didn't do anything special here except tweak my distribution a bit. I out stamina'd them through the second half and fouled out 3 guards. Barth continues to think he's a gunner and scores 20 with 5 steals. Moore guns 17 off the bench. Nothing really to say here, its a sim.

Game 7: Lake Forest (ghammars) 73-58 L

I thought I might win this one. He's 6-1, but his SOS will be bad. No great shooters, rebounders, average stam, not killing me in the big 3 categories. I thought being at home, I might get a nice win. Simmy has me at even. The result is I give up 51% from the field, my starting PG fouls out in 16 min, I shoot 12 less FT, and get blown out in the second half. I didn't really have much of a game plan, my team isn't deep enough to really exploit anyone, and this result showed it. Blah.

Game 8: #5 Brandeis (carlbuzz) 112-61 L

Yeah, you read that right. I got waxed. Motion/press, 577 rated, 59/56/58 big three rating. The only real weakness to the team is poor FT shooting and average stam. The team has like 6 legit scoring threats. I decide to go +1 because he's got good guard scoring. Didn't help, his star PG fouled out my guy in 7 minutes. Then the double edged sword of running FB/Press hit me, and I was in stam trouble the entire game. Barth continued to shoot, but poorly, with 6 TO. Iversen, my backup guard had 10 turnovers. The only bright point for me in this game is that I shot almost as many FT as them. I'm taking this to mean I'm not getting totally wrecked on the big 3 areas, especially ATH.

Game 9: St John's (aejones) 70-80 W

I'm -3 for this game, and this isn't aejones' best squad, and I'm at home. But he's forgotten more about D3 than I've known, so I kind of figured this was a trap game. I decide to go +1 again to stop his outside scoring. Can't double team since I'm running press. His SG still torches me, but Barth still hasn't found a shot he doesn't like. At least he only had 2 TO. I outshoot them 16 to 39 from the line, both teams are horrible in the assist/to categories, stam was not an issue. Really, its all about the FT. Home cooking I guess. Its a good RPI win, I need it.

Game 10:at #8 Whittier (coachvegas44) 70-95 L

I'm at +11 this game. There's really nothing of value to say here. I should have lost big, and I did. No amount of coaching was going to win me this game. Nothing to learn, nothing to see here, move along. Sorry.

So its the end of the nonconference. I'm at 6-4, RPI 56, SOS 32. The team is really bad right now. Shooting .433, allowing .452. Getting outrebounded, assist to TO is at 11/18. The irony is pts allowed versus scored is 763/763, steals is 107/107, blk is 33/30. No joke. I have no idea why I scheduled the way I did. I should have gone all creampuff since I'm going to get blasted in conference too.

For all those of you who hate me, you'll enjoy this season!

Note: The reason I've been doing this thread is so people can learn from my awesomeness. Or my mistakes, whichever is greater. Please feel free to comment on any wrong assumptions I'm making, or anything else. If you have a good looking sister, send pics.